


Recollection

by Scribe



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dom goes to see Billy in a play</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recollection

Dom's seen Billy in plenty of plays, and it remains one of his favorite experiences. The passion that can't quite be captured on film shines through his every world and action and has the interesting effect of making Dom fall a little bit in love with each of Billy's characters. He's used to that, too. God knows he'd loved Pippin- all of them had, Billy and Dom and Merry and Dom-as-Merry and Merry-as-Dom and all the other strange convolutions of identity he'd experienced.

What's strange is that he's never seen Billy play age before. The same innocence and mischievous charm that made him Pippin have landed him role after role of young men and clowns and lovers, and it startles Dom when he walks onstage with a cane and the weight of years he's never seen heavy on his shoulders. What's strange is that Dom doesn't fall in love with the character, although he pities him along with the rest of the audience. Tonight he falls in love with the actor.

The play is brilliant, but the old man is bent and bitter and utterly un-Billy. The curtain call, though, presents him with a perfect vision of Billy aged thirty or forty years. His hair is gray and sparse, face a little sunken, smile lines bold and permanent, but his eyes sparkle with energy and he grins as he bows. Dom's stomach gets tangled up somewhere near his throat. It feels less like falling than like remembering, really.

 

Another thing Dom knows from experience is that Billy is always the last one out of costume. He likes to think that Billy takes extra time and care to put away his character as well as his clothing. Whatever the reason, it gives Dom the confidence to slip in through the backstage door as the last of the other actors emerge. It takes him a minute to find the right room, but when he opens the door Billy is indeed in the act of hanging up an armful of period clothes. His makeup looks more like war paint than wrinkles up close, which gives Dom an unexpected sense of relief.

"You were amazing!" he cries.

"Dom! Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" demands Billy, sweeping him into a hug. Dom waits until he's sure the door has shut and then pulls away enough to kiss Billy, hard and messy, because he wants to. For a moment there is the taste of lipstick and medicinal tea, and then Billy responds hungrily and everything is heat and wet and hands clenching hard around his arms.

Someone knocks on the door.

"Excuse me, Mr. Boyd?" Dom takes a hurried step back, feeling oddly off-kilter.

"Sorry, just a second," Billy calls, then lowers his voice and says, "Come on, then. But we're talking about this at home." Dom nods and follows him out. His fingers are silver from where they were wound in Billy's hair and he curls them into fists to keep anyone from seeing.

 

A silent car ride later, Dom toes off his shoes in Billy's front hallway, no closer to an explanation than he'd been at the theater.

"So?" asks Billy. Dom tries and cannot read his expression. He reaches out and brushes his thumb over Billy's temple.

"Let me help you get this off. Then we'll talk. I promise."

"Are you going to take advantage of me?" It has the sound of a joke, but not the tone. Dom doesn't answer because he honestly doesn't know.

 

He hesitates for a moment in the bathroom before shucking his clothes and then again after he joins Billy in the shower. Slowly, he reaches out again, this time to gently touch the skin on either side of Billy's eyes. They close. Billy stands there, exposed and confused and calm and so willingly trusting, the slightest smile on his face. The sight takes Dom's breath away.

He begins with Billy's hair, touching his face again lightly as a warning before he starts. The suds he creates are muddy looking. Billy's hair is stiff and tacky from the coloring, and he goes as gently as he can. A touch to Billy's shoulder guides him back a step so Dom can rinse him, and then forward again to repeat the process when he notices that the water comes off murky. It takes three washes before he is satisfied. Billy's hair is a simple brown when wet, thin and somewhat tangled.

He switches the shampoo for a bar of soap and considers Billy's makeup. The blush and white highlights have already disappeared, and even the worst of it has gone a little blurry from the shower spray. The harsh brown lines are his first concern. Dom takes his time, tracing them again and again with a finger until they fade away. They have been applied perfectly atop the contours and crinkles that already exist in Billy's face and Dom relearns them as he goes, wondering at how familiar they still feel.

Next is the shadow, dark around Billy's temples and in the hollows beneath his cheekbones and jaw. Dom lingers longer than he needs. It is thickest on his eyelids and Dom is as careful as he knows how to be, fingertips barely brushing the skin. Billy stands relaxed and still through it all. When it finally comes off, the shadow runs like blackish tears along the sides of his nose.

Last are Billy's lips. Dom washes the soap from his fingers and steps forward. He traces the shape of Billy's mouth, imagining the remnants of the lipstick dissolving away at his hesitant touch. Billy remains perfectly still. The water spills over his shoulders and down his chest and arms, glimmering slightly with the movement of his breath.

This time when Dom kisses him it is quietly, just a press of lips on lips. It is slow and soft and gentle, things that Dom is not and has never been and does not want to be except for right at this moment in their own little world of water and warmth and discovery. Now, he cups Billy's face tenderly in his hands and they kiss and kiss. The spray from the shower washes away the taste and smell of their bodies and whispers white noise over their breathing until the only sense left to Dom is touch- the feel of Billy's lips moving slowly against his own, Billy's cheek warm and clean-shaven in his palm. The water winds its path around their bodies as if they were one, flowing from mouth to mouth and down chins and necks and from Billy's hair over Dom's fingers and down his arms and back to the floor. They kiss until Billy's arms come up around Dom's waist and pull him closer. Billy shivers, maybe from the cold tile on his back, and maybe not.

They spend long minutes like that. Their kisses stay soft and reverent and would be chaste if not for the emotion behind them, if not for the slow rocking of Billy's body against Dom's and the flush that spreads high across his cheeks. They kiss until Billy's breath catches and holds, until he tenses impossibly and his hands clutch at Dom's back and will not let go. Dom holds him steady through it. He holds him with two gentle hands on his face to guide him back as the tension eases, as he sighs quietly and his eyes blink open for the first time since they stepped into the shower. They are so close that Dom can see the droplets clinging to his lashes.

As he watches, Billy's eyes focus and darken and the corners crinkle up with a hidden smile. The next thing he knows the shower is off and he's in the hallway, a wall at his back and Billy plastered against his front, mouth wet and wicked against his neck. He's freezing except where Billy's hands are blazing a trail of heat across his collarbone and down his chest. It seems like some sort of spell has been broken and everything is as it always was in New Zealand, hot and wild and desperate. He finds himself laughing. It's very _them_, really, to acknowledge that talking is important and then completely forgo it in favor of sex. Billy bites down just then, hard, and his laughter chokes itself off into an odd sort of gasp. Dom takes it upon himself to propel them both toward the bedroom with all due speed.

Afterward, it takes them a while to catch their breath. Billy has a hand on the nape of Dom's neck and one leg still loosely around his waist. Dom briefly considers moving, but he knows for a fact that the sheets are damp (the logical consequence of tumbling directly into bed without bothering to dry off) and he's rather comfortable, anyway. In the end he simply drops his head to rest on Billy's shoulder. He counts down the seconds of silence in his head until he thinks Billy will speak and gets it wrong by a few, but doesn't mind. There will be time to perfect that particular skill again.

"What brought this about, then?" asks Billy, and this time Dom has an answer.

"I don't want you growing old without me," he says.

"Alright." Billy kisses the top of Dom's head, the only place he can reach without moving. "I think we can work that out."

Dom tightens his arms and legs for a second, an octopus-hug, and thinks that he probably never really fell out of love after all.


End file.
